Architecture And Ornament

For architects, historians, preservationists, students or homeowners, this richly illustrated two-part dictionary makes it easy to identify a specific architectural detail. This work allows you to visually identify a particular building element in a series of illustrations. Once the visual identification is made, the name of the term is given, making it simple to look up in the traditional architectural dictionary section of the book. The illustrations are arranged by main categories with common labels--windows and doors; walls; roofs; columns; stairs; ornament and moldings; and arches, vaults and domes. This broad range of architectural illustrations allows the work to function not only as a traditional architectural dictionary, but also as a design source or as an overview of architectural ornament and detailing.

Embellishment is a basic human need. Why was it banished from modern architecture?

Once condemned by Modernism and compared to a‘crime’ by Adolf Loos, ornament has made a spectacularreturn in contemporary architecture. This is typified by the worksof well-known architects such as Herzog & de Meuron, SauerbruchHutton, Farshid Moussavi Architecture and OMA. There is no doubtthat these new ornamental tendencies are inseparable frominnovations in computer technology. The proliferation ofdevelopments in design software has enabled architects toexperiment afresh with texture, colour, pattern and topology. Though inextricably linked with digital tools and culture, AntoinePicon argues that some significant traits in ornament persist fromearlier Western architectural traditions. These he defines as the‘subjective’ – the human interaction thatornament requires in both its production and its reception –and the political. Contrary to the message conveyed by the foundingfathers of modern architecture, traditional ornament was not meantonly for pleasure. It conveyed vital information about thedesignation of buildings as well as about the rank of their owners.As such, it participated in the expression of social values,hierarchies and order. By bringing previous traditions in ornamentunder scrutiny, Picon makes us question the political issues atstake in today’s ornamental revival. What does it tell usabout present-day culture? Why are we presently so fearful ofmeaning in architecture? Could it be that by steering so vehementlyaway from symbolism, contemporary architecture is evading anyexplicit contribution to collective values?

Ornament is currently acquiring a renewed status in architecture. As contemporary technologies of design and fabrication introduce unprecedented opportunities to intertwine the constructive logics and expressive articulations of buildings, ornament has re-emerged as a means to explore the interactions between function and decoration, volume and surface, structure and envelope. This book gives a systematic account of the technologies employed in the production of ornament and the strategies of its application today, examining a range of international built examples. Architects with particularly advanced approaches to the question of ornament contribute reports and reflections on their experiences: Sam Jacob of Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT), London; Andreas Hild of Hild und K Architekten, Munich; and Alejandro Zaera-Polo of Foreign Office Architects (FOA), London.

Yet during the twentieth century, ornament was scorned (Adolf Loos famously called it "crime") and its study all but eliminated from art and architecture curricula. What happened - and must we live with the result? Is ornament dead?".

An unprecedented homage to modernist architecture from the 1920s up to the present day Ornament Is Crime is a celebration and a thought-provoking reappraisal of modernist architecture. The book proposes that modernism need no longer be confined by traditional definitions, and can be seen in both the iconic works of the modernist canon by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius, as well as in the work of some of the best contemporary architects of the twenty-first century. This book is a visual manifesto and a celebration of the most important architectural movement in modern history.

A graphic guide to ornaments of 20th century building envelopes.

In the half century after the building of the Crystal Palace (1851), some architects, engineers, manufacturers and theorists believed that the fusion of iron and ornament would reconcile art and technology and create a new, modern architectural language. This book studies the development of mechanised architectural ornament in iron in nineteenth-century architecture, its reception and theorisation, and the contexts in which it flourished. As such, it offers new ways of understanding the notion of modernity in Victorian architecture.